Understanding the use of color, not for its sole ability to mimic nature but also for its emotive qualities, reveals Stevens to be a modern painter, who prefigured later artists such as Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin.
Provenance
Charles Guasco, Paris (and his sale, Galeries Georges Petit, Paris, June 11, 1900, lot 79, as Dialogue muet)
Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris (acquired at the above sale)
Société anonyme Georges Petit, Paris by 1907
Maurice Despret collection, Brussels
Sale: Hotel Drouot, Paris, 23 June 1971, lot 155
H. Shickman Gallery, New York
Mr and Mrs Deanne Johnson, New York and Los Angeles, until 2004
Didier Aaron, New York
Private collection, TexasExhibited
Brussels and Anvers, L’œuvre de Alfred Stevens, Catalogue de l’exposition organisée par la société royale des beaux-arts et l’art contemporain, 1907, no. 71 (as Dialogue muet), lent by Sociéte anynoyme Georges Petit
Stockholm, Liljevachs Konsthall, Exposition d’art Belge moderne, September 1927
Brussels, Musées royaux des Beaux-arts de Belgique, Alfred Stevens and Joseph Stevens, 1928
Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Exposition Centennale de l’Art belge, 1930
Brussels and Amsterdam, Alfred Stevens (Brussels, 1823–Paris, 1906), Royal Museums of Fine Arts 5 May 2009 – 23 August 2009; Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam 18 September 2009 – 24 January 2010, no. 69.
Literature
Paul Lambotte, “L’œuvre de Alfred Stevens, catalogue de l’exposition organisée par la société royale des beaux-arts et l’art contemporain, Bruxelles and Anvers,” L’Art Flamand & Hollandais, revue mensuelle illustrée, Vol. 7, January-June 1907, p. 160
Marjan Sterckx, “Exhibition review of ‘Alfred Stevens’,” Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 9, no. 1 (Spring 2010), np., ill.
Catalogue note
The Exotic Trinket provides an intimate look at the milieu of the 19th century French upper class woman, a subject that fascinated Alfred Stevens throughout his career. In a mise-en-scène of astonishing technical virtuosity, Stevens has created a scene of multi-layered opulence, a setting that could be found in any Parisian hôtel particulier at the time.
Dressed in the finest satins, velvets and silks, the model incarnates the image of the upper-class female. Stevens was very interested in fashion and documented, with almost photographic accuracy, the latest trends. It is highly possible that he borrowed the black dress from Pauline von Metternich, the influential wife of the Austrian ambassador and promoter of the English haute couture designer, Charles Frederick Worth. However, our model is much more than a fashion icon. While her graceful manner and elegant attire signify social status, her engaged pose adds a sense of inwardness. Owing to previous painters such as Johannes Vermeer, the figure’s beauty and somewhat superficiality belies a moment of self-reflection, which is conveyed through her interaction with the striking statue of an Indian elephant. In fact, the elephant assumes a place of primary significance, thanks both to its careful rendering and to its prominent position in the composition. As the focus of the woman’s gaze, it is the key to unlocking her state of mind: this beautiful young woman is daydreaming of faraway places. She imagines stories of India and the Orient as the assemblage of objects from various countries suggests: a Japanese screen, a Persian carpet and a statue of an Indian elephant. Made of wood, ivory and colored glass, the elephant was part of Stevens’ vast personal collection and featured in at least two other paintings all comprised in the series he called India in Paris. Our Exotic Trinket, its companion also titled Exotic Trinket (the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam) were reunited with their carved elephant in the most recent retrospective of the artist in 2009.
The inclusion of the elephant also reveals Stevens’ own fascination with the Orient, a passion shared with many of his contemporaries since the rediscovery of Japanese and exotic artifacts in the 1860s. Stevens became an avid collector, who filled his home with furniture, screens, parasols, kimonos, masks, fans and other accessories from several periods, styles and countries. His house, with its Chinese room adorned with furnishings from the imperial palace in Beijing, was even nicknamed a “grotto of the intimate” by his friend Stéphane Mallarmé (S. Mallarmé, “Lettres sur l’exposition international de Londres” in Œuvres complètes, eds. B. Marchal, Paris, 2003, II, p. 366).
The composition of Exotic Trinket is an extremely modern idea; the painting’s sense of two-dimensionality and emphasis on contrasting color suggests the influence of Japanese prints, as Stevens himself explained: “color makes the painting.” (A. Stevens, Impressions sur la peinture, Paris 1886, VIII and XII). Understanding the use of color, not for its sole ability to mimic nature but also for its emotive qualities, reveals Stevens to be a modern painter, who prefigured later artists such as Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin.